


a kindness, whatever storm

by TolkienGirl



Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [348]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Codependency, Family Feels, Gen, Gold Rush AU, Maedhros and Maglor need each other eternally, Platonic Cuddling, Post suicide attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-12
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-03-18 14:54:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29370348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: The stones in his pockets, the vicious weight of his heart. When he plucked his handful of burdens from Turgon’s wall, he was grateful for how heavy they could make the body he carried. No matter, now, that the body was his own. He grieved, more openly and fully than ever before, that he should not bear Maedhros' weight again.
Relationships: Maedhros | Maitimo & Maglor | Makalaurë
Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [348]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1300685
Comments: 4
Kudos: 21





	a kindness, whatever storm

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "City of Grace" by Jake Adam York

_Don’t cry, cano_. Maitimo stretches out his hands, a benediction in his fingertips. He has done this a hundred times, clearing the tears from Maglor’s eyes, but never when his hands were so large, large enough that one could nearly cover Maglor’s face. He is so much taller than Maglor, too, even stooping as he is.

 _I’m small again,_ Maglor says, wondering. _How did this happen?_

Maitimo turns his head, and says, over his shoulder,

“If you’d known him when he was small, you’d love him too.”

The scene changes. Fresh spring grass weaves tenderly beneath them. Maglor stares up, up, at crabapple blossoms that serve as rosy windows through which to see an achingly blue sky. This is the drive at Formenos; this is the road to the world. If Maglor turns his head and rests his cheek against the earth, the farmhouse is visible, rising like a mountain.

It is midday; it might be dinner time. Strange, that Mother has not called for them yet.

But Maitimo, beside him, says, _It’s pleasant here. Shall we stay?_

Maglor answers, _Why would we go?_

Birds singing, rain driving, blood running. _Thump thump, thump thump_ , sing the birds in his head, with voices that are not birds’ voices at all. Nevertheless, he bleeds and aches. Nevertheless, drumbeats pour forth from gaping beaks.

_Shall we stay, Maitimo? Shall we stay?_ He is the one asking the question now.

Maglor is warm—too warm. He opens his eyes, and the light that greets them is also warm, though dim and yellow-colored. It is, he decides, still too comfortable to be hellfire.

The crabapples are gone. His head pounds.

Considering the stone walls; the angles of the window, the door—observing the patient darkness creeping in over the windowsill—breathing the curiously damp air—

He is in Mithrim, in Maedhros’ room.

In Maedhros’ bed.

Maedhros is here, too, but his back is to Maglor. The shoulder beneath the blanket is nearly the right shape. Beyond Maedhros is Gwindor, hunched forward in his chair. Maglor shrinks back, shuts his eyes again. He does not want Gwindor’s scrutiny—Gwindor who spoke with such disdain of him.

Fingon overheard that, too. Fingon and Gwindor, Amras and Finrod…it is only a matter of time before every one of Maglor’s brothers, every one of his cousins and allies, has learned the truth. Has joined in digging a grave for every part of him but his corpse.

This is why— _No. Death was at your door, and you would not let it in. You cried for help, not for the end._

_Coward._

Movement: Maedhros shifting position. Maedhros’s voice in his ear.

“Maglor,” Maedhros says. “You’re awake, aren’t you?”

His voice is soft. Familiar—at least, as familiar as it can be, now that it is thinner and rougher than of old. For Maedhros, Maglor will brave Gwindor. He blinks in the yellow light, meets his brother’s gaze—now facing him—and murmurs,

“I’m awake. I didn’t know I slept.”

“Fingon slipped you something,” Maedhros says. Gwindor has risen; he stumps to the window and stares out of it, as if anything can be seen at this hour of darkness. “You’ve been gone for hours.”

If only Fingon had been considerate enough to poison him completely! Maglor does not say this, however, for he thinks it would hurt Maedhros.

“Oh,” he murmurs, instead. An empty word. “Well…I am sorry for stealing your blankets.”

“You were my blanket,” Maedhros tells him. “Fingon said there’s nothing better for hypothermia than shared body heat.”

“Where’s Fingon, now?” They are all alone here, save for Gwindor. Amras has disappeared, too.

“He went to gather more remedies, I think. And to chew on some scoldings instead of his supper.” Maedhros’ face, so near, is like it always was—save for the ridged scar over the bridge of his nose, and the way the corners of his lips never seem to be clear of blood. 

Gwindor huffs.

“Maitimo,” Maglor says, desperately. He can feel tears coming.

“Don’t,” Maedhros whispers. “Don’t worry.”

(Maglor is small again.)

( _I don’t want you to hate me._ )

The stones in his pockets, the vicious weight of his heart. When he plucked his handful of burdens from Turgon’s wall, he was grateful for how heavy they could make the body he carried. No matter, now, that the body was his own. He grieved, more openly and fully than ever before, that he should not bear _Maedhros’_ weight again.

When Maglor was yet a man, and not some ugly, sorry wraith, he held his brother in the foul upper room. He held him in the pitiless desert. He held him in the last moments of their murdered youth.

But because that man had the heart of a coward, none of these were enough to make him strong; to keep him whole.

“Speaking of supper,” says Gwindor, in the tone of someone very much on his dignity, “You should have a little more than broth, Russandol.”

“Oh, I couldn’t.”

Gwindor is adamant. “Your fever’s down. I’m no doctor, but I know that once you’re without fever, you should eat. Good for your constitution.”

“I agree entirely that my constitution deserves to be shaken violently,” Maedhros says, coughing lightly. “It’s a devil of a thing.”

Maglor stares at the ceiling, the seams between stones in the wall: anywhere but Gwindor.

“You two have your little talk,” Gwindor growls, not deigning to answer Maedhros’ latest remark. He resumes his stumping straight out the door.

Left alone with the brother he loves best—the brother whom he tried to die for, and almost killed in return—Maglor tries to fold his spirit into a state of contemplation. What would be easier? To remember… _everything_ …or to let the night close over him, his mind fixed on whatever is nearest to nothingness? Of course, Maglor does not know whether Maedhros will give him a choice. He does not know what Maedhros has been saying and doing, in his fevered flush.

( _I need you, God damn it, Macalaure, I need_ —and they had plunged beneath the surface again.)

He must not wait to find out what his brother will do now. He pushes himself up, freeing himself of the bedspread coils.

Maedhros’ hand finds his right elbow; clings to it. “Wait.”

“I’ve troubled you long enough.”

“I said not to worry.”

Maglor relents. (Maglor is swallowed by relief.) “I am not going to _leave_ ,” he says, as if every next step is laid plainly before his feet. “I am only going to fetch you some water, and stop crowding you.”

“You and water,” Maedhros murmurs, but Maglor has known the quirks of his brows and lips for longer than he has known anything, and he recognizes a pale attempt at humor.

Desperately aiming for gentleness, Maglor tells him, “The madness is gone from me.”

Maedhros’ eyes are red-rimmed. “Is it?”

“I couldn’t…I didn’t really want to die, I suppose.” Maglor will not be leaving the bed, it seems. He stretches out again, atop the covers, his hands curled to his breast. Maedhros does not have two hands, but he almost mirrors the pose: lying on his back with his head snapped left, hand and handless wrist crossed and motionless against his shirtfront. “I just wanted quiet,” Maglor explains. “Peace.”

“You’re so much like him,” Maedhros whispers. “Athair, I mean. When you talk like that.”

“Athair?” Maglor is shocked enough that his voice rises. Quieter, then: “How can you say so?”

“I meant no offense.” Maedhros blinks. His fingers crook, knuckles baldly white where the bones are too close to the skin. “Or are you angry at Athair, too?”

To be angry at Athair, or to be like him? Maglor must decide between these lines of melody, a harder choice than most. To Maedhros, he might say, _Athair did not leave you for love. Athair did not fail you by necessity_ , but it would strike the wrong chord.

“I always am,” Maglor says, deciding. “I always have been.” He runs a hand over his chin; he wants something to do with his hands. An unfair advantage over Maedhros, of course, but words are the battleground between them—the boneyard—the tender grass along Formenos drive. Poetry will not suffice; simple prose must be Maglor’s at last, or else he fails utterly.

He does not know how much is too much to say. The morning in its reckless grief looms like a grave-marker between them, but if Maglor considers the whole affair from another angle, he can salvage a little hope. Seen through the lens of life, seen all alone in this room, they are two brothers who have been through a drowning _together_. They are warm again, and talking to one another again, and in an awful way, the world is right.

(As long as it is just the two of them. Maglor must keep even their other blood outside.)

“If it weren’t for Athair,” Maglor says, swimming up under the swaying surface of the half-lit past, “We’d be at Formenos now. Safe.”

Maedhros is quiet. Staring, pale, and quiet. Then he says,

“God. A cruel thought.”

“Because we can’t have it?” Maglor asks.

“Don’t be angry with Athair,” Maedhros says, not answering the question. “He ran from a threat that was real and waiting. In the city, Macalaure, we were…we were being watched. Not just Grandfather. _He_ would have come for us in the end. Bauglir, I mean.” He waited to say the name until he had to, but he _did_ say it. Maglor owns himself surprised. Surprised, and able to imagine living only if he does not have to face a life outside this room.

“Bauglir,” he echoes. Not frightened, not now, because Bauglir cannot reach them here. “He— _he_ spoke of the city?”

“He knew so much about us. About Athair. Mother. Me, but I was always up to no good in those days, so perhaps—perhaps it should not come as a shock that he had word of my whereabouts.”

“He told you all this…for sport?”

“Yes, Macalaure. For sport.” Maedhros sighs. “He would not have rested until Athair was his. And if not Athair…one of us. Better that it was—”

“No,” Maglor chokes out. He can feel the stones’ weight again. He can feel it all. “No, I’m sorry, God, Maitimo. No.”

Maedhros smiles at him. “There you are,” he says. “My defender.”

Maglor finds something to do with his hands: he can hide his face behind them. He does not want his brother to see him cry. Not now, when he is trying to be a man again.

“I didn’t defend you,” he gasps, through his fingers. “I let you…I let you…”

When he knelt beside the bed, hours ago now, Maedhros stroked his hair. That was how he first knew that there was forgiveness left in his Maitimo. The tension in his bones eases when Maedhros’ hand comes to rest at his brow again, slipped between temple and pillow.

Maedhros says, “It was a trap.”

“Celegorm would have—”

“Gotten himself killed? Yes, I have it on some authority that he would. But you kept them alive for me, Maglor. Truly you did.”

“I lied.”

“We all lie. And for all you knew, Ulfang could have been lying.”

Maglor, here and now, will tell the truth. “No, he wasn’t. What he said about you…I knew it was really you. And I did nothing.”

“And all in all, my life took a turn for the better,” Maedhros muses, his gaze half-lidded. Of course. He is very tired. More than tired: _ill_. “I…I made them very angry, that day that Ulfang saw me. I was put out to pasture. I met Gwindor, and Estrela.”

A new prospect presents itself. “Did you… _fight_ Ulfang?” Maglor asks, still incredulous.

It wins him a another smile, at least—real rather than piteous. “Yes.”

“Because—”

“Because he was going to kill you.” Maedhros’ fingers brush lower, touching Maglor’s cheek, covering the tears drying stiffly there. “I would have torn him apart, if will alone were enough.”

It is worse like this. Worse to know that it was the same Maedhros, fierce in love and war, who was flayed upon the rack. Not some pale shadow; not a lost chapter, out of order in an otherwise recognizable life. It was Maedhros—at all times, a Maedhros Maglor would have known perfectly well.

Maglor asks, humbler than he has ever been in all his life, “Can you ever forgive me?”

_Do you hate me?_

(Maedhros asked him that once, when he was Maitimo, when they were all alone.)

Maedhros’ eyes have fallen shut. But he sees the unspoken question hanging in the air: he must. Softly, he says, “I don’t hate you, darling. I could never hate you.”

Maglor closes his eyes, too. His brother’s hand is hot and dry, cradling his cheek. It is as if Maedhros cannot let Maglor stray from his reach. It is as if he still thinks there is a danger of Maglor running. But Maglor will not run this time; sleep can take him gently, while the rest of Maitimo’s fever burns away.

The rest of the world will hate him for living, but he no longer needs to die.


End file.
